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Published: January 4th 2012
American Museum of National History
Part of the Smithsonian Institution, often called the 'Nations Attic'Today was a day in downtown Washington DC.
As bad as traffic was in the suburbs, traffic in the city is even more painful, so I took the
Metro subway.
It started in the early 1970’s, and the entire system has the futuristic yet dated look so identified with that era.
The stations themselves are underground vaults lit by indirect lights.
The
fare system drives people crazy; the price varies by the length of the trip and time of day.
What scares me is that other subway systems also have the technology to introduce this fare structure, although none have yet.
The Metro is also notable for its fines for people who
eat on the train, which some people view as another example of excessive government intrusion.
Cocoran Art Gallery
I first visited the
Corcoran Art Gallery.
It’s one of the oldest art museums in the United States, founded just after the Civil War ended.
It occupies a Neoclassical building near the White House.
The multi-story columned atrium is almost a work of art itself.
The museum’s main strengths are American art and European art from the 1800s.
Much of the latter was
the gift of William Clark, an industrialist and former US Senator.
The first few rooms concentrate on American Art before World War II.
They are arranged chronologically.
The rooms have displays explaining the different movements and what they tried to accomplish.
The highlight of this section is Frederic Edwin Church’s famous picture of
Niagara Falls, which has extraordinary levels of detail and a viewpoint above the falls instead of on shore.
In the mid 1800s, this was the painting against which all other landscape paintings were measured.
Also included is a pair of portraits by
John Singer Sargent, one of the most famous artists of the era.
While both are sumptuous and beautiful, by modern tastes they also make the sitters appear to be part of the room decoration.
Since the purpose of these portraits was to signal social position and wealth, the effect is deliberate.
After the American rooms comes the European Art.
It is arranged Salon style, with pictures stacked on top of each other.
This replicates how they were shown in Senator Clark’s house.
Most of the art is English and Dutch,
Entrance lobby of the Corcoran Museum
One of the grander public rooms in a city filled with them. with a handful of Impressionists thrown in.
They are not nearly as good as the Americans.
For example, the one
Rembrandt portrait is “Attributed to Rembrandt” rather than definitively painted by him.
Something unexpected falls next to this Gallery, the
Salon Dore, another museum highlight.
During the reign of Louis XV, the French noble Pierre-Gaspard-Marie Grimod bought and renovated a house in Paris.
He included a stunning drawing room meant as a gift to his new bride.
The room is covered in mirrors and gold leaf; it was meant to make her feel like a princess.
A century and a half later, the French government sold the contents of the house to raise money, and Senator Clark bought the room for his own mansion.
He later donated it in its entirety to the Corcoran.
It’s now located next to the European Art galleries, and still stunning.
The sculpture gallery falls after the European gallery.
The Corcoran owns a large number of American Bronze sculptures.
Three of them are truly notable.
The first is a sculpture of cowboys on galloping horses by
Frederic Remington.
He pushed bronze
The White House
The White House, through the security fences. casting to its technical limits with this complex sculpture, which has most of the horses’ hooves in the air.
The next sculpture is a squarish sculpture of a turkey.
It’s roughly done, and looks like something that someone would make in an advanced art class.
What makes it notable is that the artist was John Singer Sargent.
This is one of only three known sculptures that he ever made.
The final notable sculpture is a realistic rendering of a voluptuous nude female torso.
When it was unveiled at the museum in 1918, it caused a huge scandal.
It was covered by a curtain, and a guard would only remove it when there were no ladies present!
How times change.
The second floor of the museum has the modern art galleries, and temporary exhibits.
All of the temporary shows were being installed while I was there, so over half the floor was closed.
The modern art is arranged by topic rather than by movement.
This being Washington, one room tried to show how artists used pop art techniques to explore political topics.
Since most of
Washington Monument
One of the most iconic monuments in Washington DC, it honors the first president. Look carefully to see the color change half way up, where the original quarry ran out of stone. this art was made after the pop movement was over, I found the analysis to be quite a stretch.
The rooms dedicated to use of form (mostly
minimalism) and color (mostly
abstract expressionism) were better.
One room was dedicated to artists from the
Washington Color School , a variant of Color Field Painting centered on Washington DC.
The best, however, was a photography gallery dedicated to the
Meta Photographs show.
In the mid 1970s, Richard Gordon created a long series of photographs that were witty commentaries on the photography process.
He shot photos in mirrors, photos of other people taking photos, photos of people looking at postcards, models in front of advertisements for cameras, and many others.
I’m conscious of the process from composing vacation shots (including those in this blog!), so I loved this show.
The photos were ultimately compiled into a book called Meta Photographs, copies of which are available in the bookshop.
It originally sold for 6.95 (the price is on the book) and now sells for four times as much.
After the Corcoran, I headed to the Smithsonian.
I had to pass by the White
Entrance to the Star Spangled Banner
The actual flag is far to fragile to handle photographs, so the Smithsonian built this. House to get there.
These days, that meant navigating a sea of security barriers, fences, and groups of tourists.
For obvious reasons, one can’t really get close to the building.
The best view available is the back lawn through the security fence.
National Museum of American History
The
Smithsonian Institution exists due to one James Smithson, English industrialist, amateur geologist, and wealthy eccentric.
He apparently really wanted an heir to carry on his name.
He specified in his will that if his son produced a male child of his own, he would inherit a fortune of over one million dollars.
If the son died without a male heir, the money would go to the United States of America, a country James Smithson had never visited, to establish an Institution for the discovery and dissemination of useful knowledge.
The Smithsons’ pain is our gain, because the son died childless, and the Smithsonian Institution was established soon afterward.
It is now the largest museum complex in the world.
The Smithsonian Institution is often called the nations attic due to the huge amount of things it has collected,
A 300 year old house
A portion of a house built in the late 1600s in Ipswich Massachusetts, now the centerpiece of 'If These Walls Could Talk' everything from a Civil War gunboat to 200 models of mousetraps.
The most random items have ended up in the
National Museum of American History, which attempts to show the things that have created current American culture and identity.
This museum takes a long time to see due the vast collection, so I only saw a portion of it.
The most important gallery is a relatively new one celebrating the
Star Spangled Banner.
As most school kids know, the current national anthem started out as a poem written by Francis Scott Key after he witnessed the bombing of Fort McHenry during the War of 1812.
The “Flag was Still There” was a large flag raised over the fort to show that the British had failed to take it.
The fort’s commander kept the flag after the war, and showed it at patriotic events around the country.
It became very famous.
Eventually, one of his descendents donated it to the Smithsonian.
The cloth flag is now almost two centuries old and has become very fragile.
It’s displayed in a special room under very low light to prevent further deterioration.
Next
to this gallery is the most popular section of the entire museum, the
First Ladies ball gowns.
The exhibit is now so famous and long running (since 1920!) that there is also an exhibit about the exhibit.
Currently on display is one gown per administration, from Eisenhower to Obama.
Another room holds gowns that were worn other places than at inaugurations; included here are two of the most precious, one dress each from Martha Washington and Mary Todd Lincoln.
The exhibit tries to be more than just a fashion show with displays on the changing role of the First Lady over the years.
Some have been content with being social hostesses, while others have tried to be far more active in influencing the nation’s affairs.
Another notable gallery is the
story of a house.
In 1963, a real estate developer planned to raze a house in Ipswich Massachusetts that had been built in the late 1600s.
Local preservationists were appalled.
While they could not stop the redevelopment, they did persuade the Smithsonian to take the house as a donation.
The house is now the center of a display on the lives of the
Michelle Obama's inaguration gown
The latest addition to the famous First Ladies exhibit families that lived there over the years.
The surrounding displays are filled with artifacts illustrating the changing lives and eras.
The goal is to make history feel personal by describing particular people rather than overarching themes, and it works fairly well.
The house was originally owned by a wealthy ship captain.
It was sold to an army officer just before the Revolutionary War.
In the middle 1800s, it became a hotbed of anti-slavery efforts.
The family at the time was deeply religious, and believed that slavery was a moral sin.
By the early 1900s, the neighborhood had gone into decline, and the house was rented to Irish immigrants who worked in the near-by factories.
One of these families ultimately bought it and lived there through World War II.
This part of the display has ration books, war-themed games, and other domestic memorabilia from this era that is rarely seen.
The final section describes how researchers and curators gathered the information needed to make the exhibit.
The final gallery I toured is a preview gallery from the
National Museum of African American History.
It contains key documents like
Woolworth's lunch counter
At this lunch counter in Greensboro North Carolina, four college students sparked a civil rights revolution a copy of the
Emancipation Proclamation, the British act that legally expanded slavery to all colonies, and a rock from the notorious African fort where captured slaves were forced onto ships.
On a brighter note, the display also includes paintings from African-American artists, showing the struggles and triumphs of life in the civil rights era.
Just outside the entrance is the segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter from Greensboro North Carolina where four black students staged a
sit-in in 1960; this sparked protests that spread throughout the South.
The show was a little document heavy for my tastes, but I still enjoyed it.
It has a perspective that is not often found in a history museum.
On the way out, I stopped in the gift shop to buy the Smithsonian’s most famous (and popular) souvenir:
Astronaut Ice Cream.
Freeze dried ice cream was developed for the Apollo Moon missions.
It stays solid at room temperature, and will keep forever as long as it is sealed in the Mylar bag.
The substance melts as you eat it, and it actually does taste like ice cream (but it has the texture of a sponge).
The bag
A sample of mousetrap models
Proof that people will never stop trying to build a better mouse trap, these are just a portion of the hundreds in the Smithsonial collection has a picture of a space launch on it, along with a note to not eat it in the museum!
The Smithsonian sells thousands of them per day.
I finished the day by heading south into Virginia.
Along the way, I needed some dinner.
I decided to get it at a staple of Southern highways, the
Waffle House.
This chain of restaurants makes your average diner seem like a palace.
They specialize in serving a very limited menu of southern comfort food (the entire thing fits on a placemat) very quickly.
It’s certainly not nutritious, but it’s tasty, filling, and very cheap.
Be warned that their pies are incredibly addictive.
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